Green for go for Tesco deal

Ker-ching. Tesco looks as if it has got through the regulatory checkout with its desired £3.7 billion takeover of Booker. The Competition and Markets Authority has given the deal, decried by some smaller rivals as anti-competitive, provisional approval.

It is rare to give a merger the nod at this stage and then row back. Like Sainsbury’s with Argos, which also went through, regulators see Tesco’s move into wholesaling food as a diversfication rather than consolidation to the disadvantage of customers. The trail-blazing move looks all over bar the shouting.